


cornerstone

by kosy



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Baltimore Crabs (Blaseball Team), F/F, Light Angst, Long Siesta, Nonbinary Lesbian Valentine Games, Old Friends, Post-Season/Series 11, Pre-Relationship, i mean it's nagomi so. by default it's a little sadgomi, the tragic romance of being star players, this is just. gentle that is all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28686138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/kosy
Summary: Silence settled in then, but Nagomi had never been uncomfortable with silence. They sat on the bed and looked at each other, considering. They listened to the waves. It was the quietest Nagomi had felt in months.
Relationships: Nagomi Mcdaniel/Valentine Games
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	cornerstone

**Author's Note:**

> somebody brought up valentine/nagomi in the crabitat writing channel and a few hours later this sprung fully formed from my head. they're simply very good i think.
> 
> i've written valentine here as a nonbinary lesbian who uses they/them pronouns, just so you're aware. as far as content warnings—not any that i can think of, but let me know if you think something should be added.
> 
> thanks for reading! enjoy!

“So why here?” Nagomi asked. 

The question had been—not quite eating at her, but curling in the back of her mind since she got here. 

It was a nice house, an unassuming light blue two-story on the Oregon coast, all natural light and sea breeze blowing in through the door and paintings hanging on the wall. The windows in the bedroom were open, and the crashing of waves in the distance was audible even from there. The nearest city was miles away and the nearest blaseball stadium was much further. 

It was a nice house, a beautiful house, even, and it didn’t make any  _ sense. _

In the doorway, Valentine paused. “What d’you mean ‘why here’?” 

“I mean—” She gestured meaninglessly, then sighed and started small. “Why Oregon? It’s nowhere near the Tacos. Nowhere near any of your old teams, for that matter.” 

They quirked a small smile at her. “Yeah, exactly.”

“That can’t be convenient.” 

“Oh, it’s not, believe me.” Valentine stepped the rest of the way into the room, flicking off the hallway light as they went. “But neither is moving every time you get feedbacked, so.” They shrugged, perched themselves on the other side of the mattress. “Why put down roots? I’ve never been much of a city person anyway.” 

“Yes, but…” She trailed off. There was no real argument to counter that, just as there was no real reason for her to have chosen Baltimore as her home. She had her villa in Hawai’i, her long-abandoned rental house on the outskirts of Breckenridge, her place in Dallas, even her own corner of Hades, but her apartment by the harbor would always be where she returned. Even if there was rarely anyone there to return to these days. 

But that, she supposed, was the life of any star player: a constant, marrow-deep homesickness, no matter where you were. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised her anymore. 

Valentine gazed at her intently from the other side of the bed, a glimmer of something like understanding in their eyes. “I figure, you know, sure we all have infinite money, but what’s the point of another empty house?” 

Nagomi shrugged uneasily, and Valentine leaned back a bit, some of the intensity fading from their expression, and they didn’t say anything else. Silence settled in then, but Nagomi had never been uncomfortable with silence. They sat on the bed and looked at each other, considering. They listened to the waves. It was the quietest Nagomi had felt in months. Years, possibly. She tried not to keep track. 

“You aren’t angry about it,” Nagomi said suddenly, the first words spoken in three, maybe four minutes. “It doesn’t—it doesn’t  _ eat _ at you.” The realization wasn’t a surprise, really, but she felt an unfamiliar stab of—something. Something. 

“No,” they answered, easy. Cocked their head. “Why does it eat at you?” 

She exhaled sharply, fingers of her remaining hand twisting up in the sheets. “Nothing is my choice. Not where I live, not who I live with, not what I do with my time. Not even my body is my own.” She held up the massive crab claw that was once her left arm, and she could feel Valentine’s eyes tracing over the spurs of chitin jutting from skin, the place where her jaw had become mandible, the eyestalks that peeked out of her dark hair. “It grows from the bone. Bursts through sometimes. I bleed. There isn’t even anything I can  _ do _ about it. You know how it feels.” 

“It does feel cruel to call them blessings sometimes,” they agreed quietly. 

“I don’t… You wanted to know why I’m angry. God, Val, how can you be anything  _ but _ angry?” 

Every star player Nagomi had ever met was seething with it, burning with it. It was an endless rage, vast and bottomless, and nobody ever said it aloud but the awareness was constant. They looked each other in the eyes and they knew. 

Friendships between star players were rare, yes, but it wasn’t for lack of understanding. It was for understanding far too much. 

They sighed. “I’m just… I don’t know. I’m not that sort of person, I guess.” They pulled what remained of their bottom lip—what had not become mandible, what had not become a perfect mirror of her—between their teeth and worried at it for a long moment before they spoke again. “I haven’t been hurt by it the same way you have, either, I admit. Which certainly helps. It’s just been the constantly switching teams for me.” 

“Even that, though.” Nagomi was desperate, now, and she didn't even know what she was desperate for. If there were words for it she didn't know them. “Even that hurts. Not knowing  _ when _ you will have to pick up and leave your life behind, only that someday you will. Inevitable.” 

It was dark, but she could see the softness in Valentine’s eyes. “Of course it hurts. It'll always hurt to leave friends, cities, teams, ways of life.” They waited until Nagomi nodded, throat suddenly tight, and then continued. “But Nagomi, I don't  _ fear _ that. Change is…” Another sigh. “It's just something new, you know? It doesn't mean what I had is gone.” 

An unexpected pang of guilt. “I should have written to you more often than I did.” 

Valentine was feedbacked away from the Crabs on the twenty-fifth day of season four. They had lifted up a hand in a weak little wave as they left the stadium with the Jazz Hands at the end of the game. That was the last of Nagomi saw of them for a while, but they texted her before Nagomi even got back to hotel asking her to write them sometime.  _ We can be penpals or something, _ they’d said, and Nagomi had smiled for the first time since they had gone.  _ Or something. _

So she’d written a letter. Not a very good one. Nothing fancy. Updates on how the team was doing, comments on the storms that had been battering the coast those past few weeks. But she sent it to Valentine’s new address, and a few weeks later she got one back, also not very good or fancy, and she found that it was nice anyway. Folded it up and placed it in her ever-packed suitcase. Wrote a response back. They kept at it together until Nagomi got shelled, and then, well. 

Her mailbox was crammed with three years of letters by the time she was freed, envelopes bent at the edges. She laid them all out on the dining table of her apartment in Baltimore, and she didn’t reply to any of them. Too much to say, so she said nothing at all.

“I wish you had,” they said, but there was no resentment in their tone, somehow. Instead, the same quiet understanding as always.  _ I wish you had, but I understand why you didn’t. I wish you had, but I understand you. _

“Thank you for letting me stay here,” Nagomi murmured, looking away. It was a too-obvious attempt to change the subject, but Valentine didn’t seem bothered.

Instead, they laughed, surprisingly loud in the darkness, and she didn’t flinch. “Nagomi, I invited you here. You aren’t imposing.” They pulled the covers back and slid under, flipped back the sheet on her side of the bed in silent invitation. Nagomi did the same, shifting on the mattress to find a comfortable position. Tried not to snag her carapace on the thin fabric. 

“Still,” she insisted. “I’m thankful to you.” She didn’t want to think about Hawai’i, or Jessica, or the horrible absence of the Crabs, or where she might go next. What new nightmare they would all inevitably be subjected to.

“Anytime,” they told her, voice hardly above a whisper. “I mean it.” 

Nagomi rolled onto her side to face them and found them already looking back. Their expression was wide-open, heart on their sleeve the way it had been for as long she had known them, and the affection there was not unfamiliar. It was a quiet love, an old love. It demanded nothing from her except for her. It was what they had always been: penpals, old friends, faces glimpsed at an airport terminal or from across a field. They were both gone too soon for it to have been anything more. 

“I should have written to you more often than I did,” she said again, softer. There was nothing else she could think to say. 

They reached out a hand, settled it carefully on top of hers. “Nagomi,” they whispered. “It’s okay. We have time.” Their fingertips brushed gentle over knuckles, veins, carapace. Despite everything, she believed them. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading this! you can find me on tumblr @fourteenthidol if you'd like, and if you leave a comment it makes my day! thanks again <3


End file.
